Archive for
September, 2008

Here is a portion of Katie Couric’s interview with Sarah Palin, by way of Newsweek. Couric asks the Republican VP candidate about the planned $700 billion bailout.

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the–it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that. (end of excerpt)

WTF! The woman has no idea what she’s talking about! Â This is gibberish strung together out of bits heard on Fox News and seen in newspaper and web headlines, without a sliver of comprehension. I do not exaggerate: you could’ve pulled that answer out of your ass. She sounds like Dubya, but dumber. It is not sexist to call a dimwit a dimwit, especially if she’s running for the vice-presidencyâ€”and let’s face it, age and health are huge issuesâ€”probably the presidency of a nation which on Monday lost One Trillion Dollars in the worst financial crash since 1987. Gone, vanished, pffft.

Careful when you’re walking down Wall Street, watch out for falling stockbrokers.

In the way of all mothers my sister has decided that I need to eat healthier, so she brought me two cartons of juice. This is a woman who is permanently sleep-deprived (she manages a call center) and believes that all food should be covered in cheese. She also left a box of cream puffs in the fridge, which should counter the effects of the healthy drinks.Â One is, uck, broccoli, the other pomegranate. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pomegranate, all I know is that in classical mythology Persephone ate some, so she has to return to Hades every year. As for broccoli, the sight of the word is enough to make me run screaming out of the house. However, I always feel compelled to try new products (Must remember to throw out my dust-covered museum of products that swore to make my hair behave), so I poured myself some broccoli juice. It wasn’t bad. A bit too sweet, but then I love ampalaya. Fish with ampalaya, ampalaya tea, raw ampalaya. Cookie also got me four-in-one herbal coffee sachets containing coffee, cream, sugar. . .and silymarin. That’s supposed to be good for your liver, right, except that I don’t know where the cream came from and I worry about ingesting cheap dinnerware in milk.

EW: There are a lot of issues in this election. The biggest one right now is the economy.

STEWART:Â We were in this huge credit crisis, out of money. Then the Fed goes, We’ll give you a trillion dollars, and all of a sudden Wall Street is like, “I can’t believe we got away with it!” Can you imagine if someone said, “I shouldn’t have bought that sports car because it means I can’t have my house,” and the bank just said, “All right, you can have your house. And you know what? Keep the car.” [He throws up his arms joyfully and shouts] “Yeaaaaah, I get to keep the car! Wait, do I have to give the money back?” “No, it doesn’t matter.” “Yeah, I’m gonna get another car! I’m gonna do the same thing the same way, except twice as f—ed up!”Â

COLBERT:Â The idea that Lehman Brothers doesn’t get any money and AIG does reminds me very much of “Iran is a mortal enemy because they have not achieved a nuclear weapon. But North Korea is a country wecanÂ work with, because theyÂ haveÂ a nuclear weapon.” The idea is, Get big or go home. How big can you f— up? Can you f— up so bad that you would ruin the world economy? If it’s just 15,000 who are out of jobs, no. You have to actually be a global f—up to get any help.

I hadn’t seen a new movie in over a week, I was desperate to watch anything. Finally I managed to convince someone to watch ITALY with me (I wonder why no one else wanted to go). Tickle-Me Elmo and I agreed to meet at Glorietta last Saturday for the 6.30 screening. When we got there ITALY had been replaced; its last full show was at 4.30pm. So much for my plan to review it in sentences that can be reduced to the acronym ITALY.

Today I dragged Tickle-Me Elmo to Eagle Eye. It was either that or Traveling Pants 2 (didn’t see the first one) or Bangkok Dangerous (I am distressed by Nicolas Cage’s hairline). Besides, I like Shia LaBeouf and was genuinely distressed by that Details magazine cover in which his hands look tiny. Tickle-Me Elmo believes there is a conspiracy against moviegoers; there hasn’t been a good movie in Manila theatres in six weeks. What’s going on? Is it going to be like this until the Hey, Oscar! season? Some theatres even brought back Mamma Mia, the movie that cannot be killed even if it already smells like a corpse.

Eagle Eye has an interesting premiseâ€”the government is spying on everybodyâ€”but it is loud, incomprehensible, and generally senseless. Shia and Michelle Monaghan star as the poor schmucks who are forced to do a mysterious entity’s bidding. They don’t know who it is, but it sees and hears everything they do.Â Hey, didn’t I see that in an old Will Smith flick? The entity is so powerful it can control traffic lights, airports and airplanes, and contact Shia using the phone of whoever happens to be standing next to him. It’s like the world’s most demanding girlfriend. Shia and Michelle make the movie almost bearable, although it’s always entertaining watching Rosario Dawson try to act. Few actors can wring such emotion out of walking to the elevator.

“How refreshing to find that the local movie industry doesn’t have a monopoly on badness,” said Tickle-Me Elmo. “The guys who made Cavite (the Fil-Am movie) should sue. It’s the same plot.”

WESTPORT, Conn. (AP) — Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning superstar who personified cool as the anti-hero of such films as ”Hud,” ”Cool Hand Luke” and ”The Color of Money” — and as an activist, race car driver and popcorn impresario — has died. He was 83.
*****
Paul Newman didn’t seem to care about superstardom, glamour, fashion, power and all that stuff. This made him one of the coolest humans alive. He was spectacular and he knew it, and he knew that everyone knew it, so he forgot about his looks altogether. Which made him even more spectacular.

I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on TV when I was a kid. To me Robert Redford was purty but Newman was The guy. Then I saw Cool Hand Luke on TV late one night. My parents thought I was asleep, but I was watching Paul Newman as a prison inmate eat 60 or so hard-boiled eggs on a bet. In Cool Hand Luke he keeps trying to break out of prison and getting caught, and getting the crap beaten out of him, and trying again. I didn’t think this was stupid, I thought it was heroic. Much later I rented a laser disc of Hud. The character of Hud Bannon is supposed to be despicable. To paraphrase Pauline Kael, was it even possible to despise Paul Newman? Look, his popcorn was great. Go watch some Paul Newman movies.

Esquire features the late David Foster Wallace’s classic, obsessive essay on tennis, The String Theory. The subject of his essay, Michael Joyce, now works with Maria Sharapova. Most if not all of the players DFW mentions have retired, including Jeff Tarango, fondly nicknamed “Psycho”. The essay brings up probably the most unfortunate names ever to grace the tour: Cyril Suk and Alex Lopez-Moron. Imagine cheering for the latter: Mo-RON! Mo-RON! Imagine if they played doubles.

Note DFW’s virulent hatred of Andre Agassi. I didn’t like Agassi either, but not as much as I loathed Ivan Lendl. My opinion of Andre changed after he fell out of the top 100, then made his amazing comeback. Marrying Steffi Graf also helped. DFW expressed surprise at how good-looking Goran Ivanisevic was. We’ll always love Goran Ivanisevic. He wasn’t “good-looking for a Croat”â€”and by the way Croats are good-looking peopleâ€”he was lovely, period.